Of the Advantage of immediate Punishment.
The more immediately after the commission of a crime a punishment is
inflicted, the more just and useful it will be. It will be more just,
because it spares the criminal the cruel and superfluous torment of
uncertainty, which increases in proportion to the strength of his
imagination and the sense of his weakness; and because the privation of
liberty, being a punishment, ought to be inflicted before condemnation but
for as short a time as possible. Imprisonment, I say, being only the means
of securing the person of the accused until be be tried, condemned, or
acquitted, ought not only to be of as short duration, but attended with as
little severity as possible. The time should be determined by the necessary
preparation for the trial, and the right of priority in the oldest
prisoners. The confinement ought not to be closer than is requisite to
prevent his flight, or his concealing the proofs of the crime; and the trial
should be conducted with all possible expedition. Can there be a more cruel
contrast than that between the indolence of a judge and the painful anxiety
of the accused; the comforts and pleasures of an insensible magistrate, and
the filth and misery of the prisoner? In general, as I have before observed,
The degree of the punishment, and the consequences of a crime, ought to be
so contrived as to have the greatest possible effect on others, with the
least possible pain to the delinquent. If there be any society in which this
is not a fundamental principle, it is an unlawful society; for mankind, by
their union, originally intended to subject themselves to the least evils
possible.
An immediate punishment is more useful; because the smaller the interval of
time between the punishment and the crime, the stronger and more lasting
will be the association of the two ideas of crime and punishment; so that
they may be considered, one as the cause, and the other as the unavoidable
and necessary effect. It is demonstrated, that the association of ideas is
the cement which unites the fabric of the human intellect, without which
pleasure and pain would be simple and ineffectual sensations. The vulgar,
that is, all men who have no general ideas or universal principles, act in
consequence of the most immediate and familiar associations; but the more
remote and complex only present themselves to the minds of those who are
passionately attached to a single object, or to those of greater
understanding, who have acquired an habit of rapidly comparing together a
number of objects, and of forming a conclusion; and the result, that is, the
action in consequence, by these means becomes less dangerous and uncertain.
It is, then, of the. greatest importance that the punishment should succeed
the crime as immediately as possible, if we intend that, in the rude minds
of the multitude, the seducing picture of the advantage arising from the
crime should instantly awake the attendant idea of punishment. Delaying the
punishment serves only to separate these two ideas, and thus affects the
minds of the spectators rather as being a terrible sight than the necessary
consequence of a crime, the horror of which should contribute to heighten
the idea of the punishment.
There is another excellent method of strengthening this important connection
between the ideas of crime and punishment; that is, to make the punishment
as analogous as possible to the nature of the crime, in order that the
punishment may lead the mind to consider the crime in a different point of
view from that in which it was placed by the flattering idea of promised
advantages.
Crimes of less importance are commonly punished either in the obscurity of a
prison, or the criminal is transported, to give by his slavery an example to
societies which he never offended; an example absolutely useless, because
distant from the place where the crime was committed. Men do not, in
general, commit great crimes deliberately, but rather in a sudden gust of
passion; and they commonly look on the punishment due to a great crime as
remote and improbable. The public punishment, therefore, of small crimes
will make a greater impression, and, by deterring men from the smaller, will
effectually prevent the greater.